Investigating the use of portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy for rapid quantification of Phosphorus in wheat straw and grains

Gilbert Permalloo

CSIRO Root Architecture & Rhizosphere

Introduction

My name is Gilbert Permalloo. I am a Research Project Officer and I am presently working on roots architecture and rhizosphere of wheat. My background is mainly sugarcane agronomy and I was doing a little bit of basic programming in Fortran 77 and GWBasic about 30 years ago. Most of my data manipulation and visualisation are done in Excel. I could not write any code in R before I joined Data School and I was spending lots of time working with data in spreadsheets. On the otherhand, I am amazed to witness every day the marvel that R can do with data manipulation and visualisation.

My Project

The aim of this project is to investigate the use of portable X-Ray fluorescense spectrocopy (pXRF) as a rapid method to quantify the amount of phosphorus accumulated in straw and grains. 200 out of 4500 grab samples were taken from one of three trials for this study. A large dataset is generated by the pXRF, which is composed of a wide range of chemical elemental composition. Data for phosphorus of Rather than yourself, this is the space to introduce your project. What are your goals, what was your data, how do you plan to work with it? Perhaps show some example data if it would help.

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Preliminary results

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Tables
Table 1: A table of data
country continent year lifeExp pop gdpPercap
Afghanistan Asia 1952 28.801 8425333 779.4453
Afghanistan Asia 1957 30.332 9240934 820.8530
Afghanistan Asia 1962 31.997 10267083 853.1007
Afghanistan Asia 1967 34.020 11537966 836.1971
Afghanistan Asia 1972 36.088 13079460 739.9811

pXRF instrument used to quantify amount of phosphorus in straw and grains

Plots from R
Amount of phosphorus (ppm) in straw vs in grains

(#fig:straw_grain-plot)Amount of phosphorus (ppm) in straw vs in grains

Amount of phosphorus in straw and grains vs grain yield

(#fig:P_yield-plot)Amount of phosphorus in straw and grains vs grain yield

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My Digital Toolbox

What digital tools have you been using in your project? Which ones have you learned since starting Data School?

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Favourite tool (optional)

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My time went …

What parts of the project took the most time and effort? Were there any surprising challenges you encountered, and how did you solve them?

Next steps

What further steps do you wish your project could take? Or are there any new digital skills that you are keen to develop as a result of your involvement in the Data School?

My Data School Experience

This poster is mostly about your synthesis project. However we would also like to hear about other parts of your Data School experience. What aspects of the program did you really enjoy? How have you been applying the skills you have learned in your daily work? Have you been able to transfer this knowledge to your team members? Concrete examples demonstrating this would be useful here (meetings/talks/collaborations/new roles). Any descriptions of the personal impact the program has had are welcome here as well!